Betty lay still and looked up from the floor.

“I—I reckon a dol-lar m-i-g-h-t,” she gasped, and caught a sob before it burst out.

“Well, you get up and I'll give you a dollar. There ain't many boys worth a dollar, I can tell you.”

Betty got up and held out one hand as she wiped her eyes with the other.

“I shall never speak to a boy again,” she declared, as she took the money.

That was when she was thirteen, and a year later Dan went away to college.


VI. — COLLEGE DAYS

“My dear grandpa,” wrote Dan during his first weeks at college, “I think I am going to like it pretty well here after I get used to the professors. The professors are a great nuisance. They seem to forget that a fellow of seventeen isn't a baby any longer.